Facebook "friends"

[Anonymous]

My family is relatively new to facebook and we don't know all the etiquette. Occasionally we get a request from an acquaintance who wants to befriend us but I don't really consider ourselves friends with access to our facebook. In the past I have befriended the requester, but felt a bit uncomfortable doing it but thought I would feel worse (rude) by ignoring... What do other people do in this situation? How rude is it considered to ignore the request? Is ignoring a common enough occurance such that people don't get offended if they are ignored and not befriended? Should I just remove our family from facebook if I can't handle this type of situation (if so, please be kind in your response).

[Anonymous]

I ignore people quite often. But that's because I used to be a high school teacher and I've had a lot of former students try to friend me.

You can also put your "friends" in categories and make privacy settings specific to each category. I have a "former students" category and an "acquaintances" category and everyone one in those have limited access to my personal information and photos.

[Anonymous]

Generally speaking, it is a bit of a snub to ignore a friend request. But if it's someone you don't know well anyway, do you really care? I normally accept most friend requests from people I know and then just set my privacy settings if it's someone I don't want to see my pictures or whatever. But I don't post anything highly personal or embarrassing, so for the most part I really don't care if a co-worker or kindergarten classmate sees my stuff. I do block people from my news feed if they post constant and/or annoying status updates.

[Anonymous]

What do you mean "my family?" Do you have a joint facebook page or something?

[Anonymous]

I ignore all the time. If I haven't talked to you in years and if I have no interest in talking to you in the future you get ignored. Snub or not I don't care. I think some people are just friend gatherers and want to have as many friends as possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I ignore people quite often. But that's because I used to be a high school teacher and I've had a lot of former students try to friend me.

You can also put your "friends" in categories and make privacy settings specific to each category. I have a "former students" category and an "acquaintances" category and everyone one in those have limited access to my personal information and photos.

Could you explain further how to put people in categories? I'd love to be able to do that with some of the people on my friends list.

[Anonymous]

Whenever I get a facebook friend request, I think about whether I would want to share the type of information I normally share on facebook with the person before I respond. I really enjoy keeping up with my family and friends on facebook and if I would have to censor my postings, I ignore the request.

[Anonymous]

I'm interested in hearing more about the "category" lists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm interested in hearing more about the "category" lists.

Go to Facebook and read the directions. It's not difficult.